


Good Reasons to Freeze to Death

by little_murmaider



Category: Metalocalypse
Genre: A pretty poorly executed national tour, Alcohol, Homesickness, M/M, Pre-Series, wild generalizations about norwegians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-08-09 08:53:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7795375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/little_murmaider/pseuds/little_murmaider
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s Dethklok’s first national tour, and Skwisgaar’s trying not to let The New Kid get under his skin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Reasons to Freeze to Death

**Author's Note:**

> Getting back into the fandom after a good...six years? Hooray! I wrote this for the Hearts and Guts exchange in 2008 (!!!). It’s my only surviving Metalocalypse fic, since the Dethslash Livejournal was deleted. It’s weird reading this in a post-Doomstar world.

It takes Skwisgaar about a week to decide he sort of loathes The New Kid.

Hate is too aggressive, too exhausting. He doesn’t want to expend that much energy on some dildo-licker he doesn’t even know. Hate isn’t something he leaps into. He has to get to know someone, spend enough time with them to unearth all of their infuriating personality traits. Hate is a crescendo.

They meet The Kid two weeks before the tour begins, the day after they finish recording. (The Manager thought it wise to credit The Kid on the album, though Skwisgaar laid down all the rhythm tracks. Skwisgaar doesn’t particularly care. He would have just gone back and re-recorded all of The Kid’s parts, anyway.) He’s older than Skwisgaar expected, and thinner. He holds his guitar case to his chest, smiling just enough to show the bottom half of his front teeth.

“Gentlemen, this is Toki Wartooth,” the Manager says. “Your new rhythm guitarist.”

The Kid’s fingers flit a greeting around the awkward shape of the case. “Hi-lo, gentile-mons,” he mumbles. “Pleasure is mines to have acquaintance makinks…for you.”

“Heyo, you’ll like him,” Pickles kicks Skwisgaar in the thigh, knocking his guitar into his crotch. “He’s from Belgium or some shit. Ya know, like you.”

Skwisgaar bites the inside of his cheeks as his hand tightens around the fret board. He glances up and The Kid is staring at him, fish-eyed and glowing. His smile pulls at the corners until his lips stretch flat and wide across his teeth.

“Toki is actually from _Norway_ , Pickles. Norway is located in _Scandinavia_ , and is neighbor to Skwisgaar’s native _Sweden_.” The Manager pauses and readjusts his glasses. “You…really have no sense of basic geography.”

“Dood, I barely know where I ahm right naow.”

Murderface carves along the seam of his seat. The tear blossoms with white stuffing. “Great, juscht great. Another inconprehenschible doushh-bag who talksh with no shense of grammar or schyntax.”

Nathan scoffed. “Right. Because you are one-hundred percent comprehensible at all times.”

“Ex- _schush_ me. My minor schpeech inpediment ish only a schlight hindrance on my otherwish impeccable grashp on the Englisch Language.”

“I tarks In-Gliss,” The Kid mutters. He pulls the case over his mouth. As he speaks, his face warps and contorts as if he was making a bowel movement. “I knows. It always not…un-easy to have findinks of meanings in words I sayinks. I…tries, dough. I gets betters. All de times.”

“Toki, as you well know, will be joining us on the upcoming national tour. This means he has just under two weeks to learn the entire Dethklok catalogue. Skwisgaar?”

“Uhah?”

“I trust you’ll tutor Toki to the best of your ability.”

The Manager has a lot to learn about trust. Specifically, not to.

 

Later, in the studio, Toki tunes his guitar without looking at the strings. Skwisgaar sits at the switchboard, twisting more knobs than necessary. Toki grins with the subtlety of a maniac.

“It super greats you is Swedish from. I beens once. It much likes Norway. I t’inks. It get cold heres? I nots so very much used to weaver heres. It always hot? How long take yous get used to weaver? Hows much—hey, what dat?”

A disc juts out of the machine. Skwisgaar retrieves it, rises, and shoves it into Toki’s chest. “I burns yous parts and songs in dere in-tire-tees on dat compactable discothèque. Figures it outs.”

Toki’s eyes trail Skwisgaar as he moves to the door. His smile recedes into his face like a wave. Skwisgaar stops at the threshold, and bumps his fist on the wooden frame. He turns his head so his chin touches his shoulder, but not enough to see Toki’s expression. “Don’ts fuck dis up.”

Then he goes.

 

The tour swaggers from city to city like a drunk. They start in California and plan to move east, but first lurch up to Washington for the third show. Toki fairs well. Very sloppy on the pick-ups, but decent speed. He never tells him this. He never tells him anything. They’re forced to share a room at every hotel. (“If you expect to hit 22 cities in 30 days,” The Manager explains after Skwisgaar’s totally metal and not un-brutal hissy fit, “you need to cut some financial corners.”) Toki is always there—opening the curtains, machine-gunning through the channels, ripping pages out of the bible, closing the curtains, chewing on the complementary coffee grinds. And talking. He’s fascinated by everything. It’s as though he’d been on societal lockdown until the age of 23.

Skwisgaar doesn’t spend much time in the room. In Seattle, he paces along the sound, scouring the docks for nothing in particular. The air is thick with salt, and makes him a little nauseous. He tries to breathe through his mouth, but still feels the familiar sting on the back of his throat.

Near the ferry terminal, he sees a Scandinavian themed bar and grill. He winces; the nausea lifts to his chest.

Out front, a teenager in a grey turtleneck and fake red beard squints. Toki stands before him, waggling his arms and chattering in wild, hoarse Norwegian. The teenager pulls his beard down to his neck.

“Buddy, I told you, I don’t speak Russian. My shift lets off in an hour, leave me the fuck alone.”

Skwisgaar watches Toki’s arms slow, then lower and tuck behind his back. Gulls make their cyclical descent to the deck.

When Toki gets back to the room there’s a gift basket filled with jars of Oslo pickled herring. He stinks like fish and doesn’t stop smiling for a week.

 

In Las Vegas, Skwisgaar takes home a slender brunette. He’s not very interested, but he needs something to pump into. He makes Toki wait in the hall.

She grips his shoulder blades, but her nails are too short to pierce skin. Skwisgaar watches her brown hair splay and gather on the pillow. Splay and gather.

Once he’s done she pulls on her dress and leaves. Toki squats on the rug, tugging at the fibers. He looks up at Skwisgaar, then hisses a word in his guttural native tongue.

Skwisgaar knows a few words in Norwegian. He wishes that wasn’t one of them.

 

“So, whats you t’inks ov’s de new kids?”

He’s sitting at a bar in Topeka, because there’s nothing to do in Topeka but drink. Nathan takes a long swallow of his beer and wipes at his mouth with the heel of his hand. “Dunno. He’s okay, I guess. Kinda sloppy on the pick-ups.”

“Rights?! I knows I nots only one who note-itsed.”

“But I mean, it’s still pretty impressive he got that far in two weeks. So, yeah. I guess he’s okay. Or, something.” He takes another swig. “Why, you not like him? What’s it like shacking up with him?”

Skwisgaar’s hand tightens around his glass. “I t’inks I might’s kills myself soons, if dat’s not likinks. He talks more dans de Jehovah’s Witness. I nots gets how you guys not beat hims wif tire iron yets.”

Nathan gestures at the bartender for another. “Probably because he doesn’t talk to us.”

“Ah-wha? His mouf is ov motor mades!”

“He’s barely said a word to me all tour. Even less to Murderface and Pickles. Seems he only talks to RobOfdensen…and you.”

The bartop glimmers with the blue glow of the television. The jukebox flickers dead with neon resistance. Skwisgaar feels beads of condensation gather against his palm. He coughs. “So. RobOfdensen? Dat’s…dat’s reals funny.”

Nathan grins and looks up at the discolored screen. “Right? So great, right? Credit goes to Pickles, I ain’t good with words and shit.”

 

It rains in Austin. Toki sits in front of the window and pretends the droplet-streaks are racing. He keeps losing to no one. “So, you tarks Swedish goods?”

The band’s been banned from use of the mini-bar, so Skwisgaar tries to mix a drink out of rubbing alcohol and nail polish remover. It’s bitter and burns all the way down to his large intestine. He takes another sip. “Ov coarse I talks Swedish. Idiots.”

“I tarks Swedish.” His finger makes a long squeak as it runs down the glass. “A little’s. I knows one t’ing. Dis couple cames to my dads for cere-er-o-me. I heres it, dens I memory haves wit it.”

“Ja, well. Tells me whats it is, or whatevers.”

Toki turns. “Det är där jag vill gifta.”

Skwisgaar spits his concoction out, and it sizzles against the carpet.

“I says somet’ing wrongs? What bads about—“

“Not’ings. It. Is not’ings. It make no sense. Give-her-ish, is all.” He downs the liquid death and his vision blurs. “Don’t ask agains.”

 

In Cincinnati, Skwisgaar finds Toki on the bathroom floor, vomit haloed on the tile. Which sort of, well, sucks.

“You t’inks you gets goes ways of Jimi Hand-Tricks? Not wifs dose pick-ups. Get ups, dildo.”

Toki gurgles as a fat bubble of puke pops in his mouth, which should probably sicken Skwisgaar more than it does. He grabs Toki by the collar and peels the saturated shirt from his skin. He tosses it aside, and it hits the toilet with a gobby smack.

The shower squeals. Skwisgaar slides Toki over the porcelain, and he shrieks as the water touches him. He begins to flail and panic, and his elbow comes down hard on the steel drain. Skwisgaar pins him to the bottom of the tub, the water soaking his back and trickling down his jeans. Toki starts yelling in manic Norwegian, and Skwisgaar immediately answers by stringing together each and every nonsensical Norwegian word he can muster. Toki stops jittering, and stares up blankly. Wet tendrils of Skwisgaar’s hair graze Toki’s face. He blinks, puts a hand over Skwisgaar’s mouth. He laughs without sound, his chest rising to touch Skwisgaar’s. Then he bursts into tears.

And _fuck all_ if he knows what that means.

 

In Memphis, Toki kisses him on the mouth. It’s not unexpected or unwanted. Nonetheless, Skwisgaar doesn’t kiss back.

“What you does dat for?” Skwisgaar whispers. Toki keeps his eyes on Skwisgaar’s mouth.

“I beens to Sweden once. I eats sticky chocolate cake. It warm, and sweets, and sits on my stomachs fer more dans ones days. I tastes its all weeks. It best t’ing I evers taste.” He lingers a moment, and Skwisgaar thinks he might kiss him again. He hears his blood hammering against his temples, feels it grow heavy in his wrists. “I wants to sees if you tastes likes Sweden.

Skwisgaar sighs, and his breath stirs the hair around Toki’s face. “I nots been in Sweden in almost nine year.”

Toki inches forward, and Skwisgaar inhales sharply. “You tastes likes it, dough.” Then he goes.

 

Skwisgaar knows Norway in clichés. He’s never been. He pictures men in thick sweaters and women with ribbons woven through their hair. Frequent Ibsen performances. Herring. Herring everywhere. Herring sold at the market, at street-corner carts. Herring jostling against juice boxes as heavy-heeled children clod for the bus. Herring served complementary with a cup of espresso. Discarded herring pressed to the pavement, their bones shadowed against the concrete like leaves. City streets glistening with clean herring skeletons, the eyes hollowed out to delicate white spirals.

He might be a racist.

In bed that night, he imagines the sheets glint with ice. He imagines himself as a Viking, the comforter slung over his shoulders like a pelt.

When Toki comes, he imagines his mouth is filling with warm ocean water.

 

It’s winter when they get to New York. They wander though Central Park, the trees lean black and spindly. They find a fountain, the bottom cracking with mold. A goose lands in the lake, and the water parts on either side of it like translucent wings. As they watch it glide over the surface, Toki closes his hand around the bend of Skwisgaar’s elbow, and whispers in soft, lyric Swedish, “This is where I want to get married.”


End file.
